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Cubed Circle Newsletter 181 – Ben Carass Goes It Solo!

Unfortunately, due to exam-related delays I was unable to contribute much of anything to this week's issue. Never fear, however, as Ben Carass saves the day this week looking at RAW, NXT, SmackDown, and his surprisingly eclectic history with fans who have jumped guardrails, including those who consulted/attempted to recruit him before hand! Whilst we do have more on this in the 'Next Week's Issue', roles will most probably be reversed next week, as Ben will, in all likelihood, take a week-long leave of absence, leading to another one man show next week, with a few different (?) pieces coming up.

– Ryan Clingman, Cubed Circle Newsletter Editor

RAW Ramblings – April 13th 2015 O2 Arena: London, England. Ben Carass.

The one thing you are guaranteed with a RAW taped in the UK is a hot crowd and unlike previous years they didn’t split the crews to run a separate , so they had an almost full roster at their disposal. Still, there wasn’t much to the show at all. They shot some angles to set up a few matches at and half-heartedly tried to have a running narrative, however instead of having a show-long storyline they told a weak story that consisted of teasing a face turn that basically played out during the course of the second hour. The show wasn’t good at all and I’m glad I saved myself the hassle of a 11 hour roundtrip and over £200 by not attending this show and saving myself for the big Rev Pro show in June.

Story was that and both had to win their matches in order to pick a stipulation for the WWE title match at Extreme Rules. Orton went to a DQ with in 2:18 when interfered, but Kane showed up and restarted it as a handicap match. In typical WWE style, the real main eventer beat the Champions with ease in 6:46 after an RKO to Kidd. Rollins was advertised to face , however after Orton won his match Seth refused to wrestle Dolph and complained to Kane in a backstage skit. Rollins said he should wrestle and told Noble to go out there and lay down for him. Noble insisted Kane should be the one to lie down because all this was his fault since he was in charge while HHH & Stephanie were away. This resulted in backstage skits with Kane contemplating what to do; pleaded with him to do the right thing for business then told Kane not to recreate the finger poke of doom from WCW. So they had the match. Kane laid down for Rollins, but kicked out at two then gave him a and went to signal for a tombstone. He pondered what to do for a while then lay down next to Seth and pulled his arm on top of himself and did the

1 job. Kane stormed off and Rollins managed to laugh while he was still selling the chokeslam. – This whole deal played out over an hour and the idea of getting behind the Kane character at this point is laughable, plus having the main storyline of RAW revolve around Kane in 2015 is just depressing.

All that tripe led to a main event talking segment with Rollins and Orton choosing their stips for the match at the PPV. Rollins’ stip was to ban Randy from using the RKO and Orton chose a cage match because he wanted to keep Seth’s stooges from interfering: Like we haven’t seen a million run-ins in cage matches. They blabbed some more until Orton finally went after Rollins, however he escaped and Mercury took an RKO. – So the main event for Extreme Rules is a “No RKO Cage Match”, what a hook!

John Cena opened the show and was booed out of the building. He sucked up to the UK fans, which unbelievably they fell for. Sycophants! Cena said London should have WrestleMania and the place went crazy, clearly forgetting all common sense and logic given that such a thing is never going to happen. Bad News Barrett came out for the US title challenge and was over like a god and said he didn’t want to wait to beat Daniel Bryan at the PPV for the IC title when he could beat Cena for the US belt right now. They had a good match and decided to kick out of each other’s finishers for no reason other than to get a reaction. Cena retained in 9:50 with the ugly springboard stunner and a second AA. came out and got a huge face reaction. She distracted Cena and Rusev jumped him from behind with a chain and Lana said their match at Extreme Rules would be a Russian Chain Match. – Probably the best thing on the show, from the match to the angle, all pretty solid stuff. I’m not happy about Rusev losing to Cena again, but hey, Superman and America always win. On a side note, said Barrett’s home town of Preston was, “an hour away” from London, which is like saying New York City is an hour away from Washington DC. I hate the WWE sometimes. It’s 230 miles for anybody that cares.

Roman Reigns was interviewed by in the ring; I thought they had lost their minds by putting Reigns out there in front of the live crowd. He was booed quite a bit, however he pandered

2 just enough to the crowd that they didn’t completely ruin the segment. Big Show appeared on the Tron and they bickered back and forth. Eventually, Show jumped Reigns with a sneak attack and chokeslammed him on top of a Black British Cab that they always have as part of the set in the UK. – How utterly stupid does Vince McMahon have to be? Going back to Reigns/Big Show after the debacle that happened before WrestleMania with Show pinning Reigns which did absolutely nothing to help Reigns as the floundering babyface. It’s unbelievable just how out of touch the old man is these days.

So remember last week when Neville lost to the WWE Champion and everybody put their “I’m a smart booker” hat on and pretended it was a good thing? Never mind that Neville didn’t nearly shine enough to get over as a serious top-level guy or that the match wasn’t given enough time to tell the story of Neville pushing Rollins to the limit. Well this week, Neville lost a 9 minute match to Dolph Ziggler. DOLPH ZIGGLER!!!! The guy who has been buried year after year and who will NEVER be a legit main eventer beat the young upstart in a throwaway unadvertised match. Go ahead, try and rationalise this one. It’s just insane. Neville did a couple of cool spots, like a 450 splash off the barricade on the floor, but come on, seriously, they have already cut his legs off before he had a chance to get some steam going. I am simply not having the, “oh these are good loses for Neville and he’ll get over by losing to top guys.” Well, I’m sorry, but Ziggler has never been, nor ever will be a top guy and losing to him only serves to stigmatise Neville as a mid-carder right out of the gate. You know what will get guys over? WINNING MATCHES! hit the ring afterwards and laid out Ziggler with a Brogue kick. – You know what; just keep Balor, Owens,

3 Zayn, Charlotte & Sasha in NXT until Vince and Kevin Dunn are gone. Nobody is going to get over with booking like this.

Filler-O-Plenty: won the Divas Battle Royal. , Natalya, , , Rosa, Emma & were all there too. It was a mess. The Bellas were on commentary and made fun of Rosa for being awful. Paige cut a hometown babyface promo afterwards and Naomi attacked her to start her heel run. I guess it will be a three-way for the title at the PPV. The Lucha Dragons squashed The Ascension in 2:15. Dean Ambrose downed and his Virgil tights in 2:10; it was a total waste of time. UK indie workers, Nikki Storm and Dave Mastiff were part of the Rosebuds. Stardust over in 1:00. Nobody cared, the only point of this match was for Fandango to dump Rosa afterwards then his old music played and the fans went crazy like it was 2013 with the goofy Fandangoing, which will last all of a week. Damien Mizdow got his win back over in a throwaway 2 minute match. This feud is officially death for Mizdow. The Prime Time Players kept up their new gimmick of being unfunny comedians and made fun of Los Matadores. over Luke Harper via DQ in 1:50; Harper hit Ryback with the top of the announcer’s table then Dean Ambrose ran down and attacked Harper post-match. It is also worth noting that Michael Cole was back on the show, no neck brace, completely no selling the same injury that killed Perro Aguayo Jr which was then changed to spinal bruising or something. Either way, it was totally stupid. JBL asked Cole about filing a lawsuit against Lesnar and Cole just brushed it off and said he didn’t want to talk about it, which is WWE code for, “We’re dropping the angle cold, everybody forget about it and go home.”

WWE NXT – April 15th 2015 : Winter Park, FL. Ben Carass

This show was a huge departure from one of the best episodes in NXT history last week with the Hideo Itami showcase. An adequate-at-best main event between and capped off a plodding show, with a bunch of nothing matches and one of the worst debuts I can remember for a long time in . There were a couple of angles and promos to further storylines, but this was defiantly a week to skip if you have other things to do.

Solomon Crowe vs. CJ Parker. – Crowe via submission at 5:20. This was CJP’s last TV appearance after being granted his release and Crowe sent him packing with an ass-kicking befitting of Parker’s WWE career. Crowe started out hot and used the face wash then hit a tope. CJ got a pointlessly minimal amount of heat with a chinlock then Crowe made his comeback and won with the Stretch Muffler. Crowe got on the mic and said the show was just beginning. – Decent showcase for Crowe, although he still needs to show a lot more if he is going to be in the main event mix.

Baron Corbin vs. Steve Cutler. – Squash for Corbin in 0:28. Corbin won with his move and a handful of the fans counted along. – Corbin is basically a one man version of the Ascension; staying at the same level, squashing geeks that nobody cares about.

Sami Zayn was backstage with Generic Chumpstain. Sami cut a promo about Rhyno wanted to use him to get to the top like did and said he would be damned if he let that happen again.

Enzo Amore & Colin Cassady w/ vs. Angelo Dawkins & Sawyer Fulton. – Enzo & Cass over in 3:50. The Yankees did their usual catchphrase fest and Big Cass said they were coming for Blake & Murphy and the tag belts. Blake & Murphy came out and gave some flowers to

4 Carmella, which she accepted. Match was the usual formula: Enzo sold and Cass made the comeback. For the finish they used the Rocket Launcher. – Meh to the match. It was all about the angle with Carmella, which isn’t ideal when this is the Tag title program.

Alex Riley was in the locker room and cut a promo about how he wasn’t going away and challenged Kevin Owens to show up to the ring next week.

Dana Brooke vs. Blue Pants. – Brooke over in 2:10. Blue Pants was over big; Brooke not so much. Someone *cough* *cough* is clearly in love with the Brooke’s bodybuilder chick physique and insisted she be on TV, because she looked very awkward and sloppy. It took about 10 seconds for the fans to start a “You can’t wrestle” chant. Everything she did was virtually in slow motion, no doubt due to Brooke trying way too hard to make sure she got the spots right. Mercifully, this debacle ended with a Cradle Shock. – What an horrendous debut and Brooke already has “go-away” heat with the NXT crowd. I know this is developmental, so I’ll cut her some slack and see how she develops., but my goodness she came off like a cheap clone, only not as talented…Now think about THAT!

Sami Zayn vs. Rhyno. – Sami via pinfall at 11:55 (TV Time). Perfectly fine TV match, the best thing on the show, but nothing special. Slow start with both guys establishing their big tough heel/scrappy babyface roles. Rhyno took it to Sami, who got a couple of hope spots in before being cut off with some power moves. Crowd was pretty dead during the heat from last taping syndrome; Sami fired up with a flurry then got a near-fall with a Blue Thunder bomb. The crowd suddenly woke up and chanted, “This is Awesome” after sitting on their hands for most of the match. Rhyno used a TKO for a near-fall then Sami came back with a big tope-con-hilo over the top. Finish saw Rhyno set up for the Gore but Sami dodged and hit the Yakzua kick to get the win. – Good win for Zayn with him back on the title hunt. Whether Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn like it or not, Sami Zayn is blatantly the best babyface in the entire company and it’s so great to see him flourish as compared to Neville whom has already been slotted in the mid-carder for life role after just three weeks.

To be honest, Vince probably only saw Sami work for the first time at the NXT show in San Jose of

5 Mania weekend, never mind having any idea about what makes the character so likeable. It is going to be a sad day indeed when Vince gets his hands on Sami.

Show closed with a fired up Sami celebrating and the announcers hyping a showdown with Kevin Owens.

WWE SmackDown – April 16th 2015. O2 Arena: London, England. Ben Carass.

Yeah, I watched SmackDown and like always it was a complete nothing show. So instead of blabbing on about a bunch of pointless stuff, there was one newsworthy incident at the tapings, which had nothing to do with the booking at all. If you are not interested in my thoughts on dumbass fans hitting the ring then skip ahead for a very brief summary of this week’s episode.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the footage of what at first appeared to be just a bunch of fans storming the ring at the O2 and proceeding to do a couple of moves on each other. Well the group of senseless chuckleheads turned out to be a “prank comedy” troupe called, Trollstation. At first I just assumed that a couple of friends had too much to drink and on the spur of the moment acted against their better judgement by hitting the ring. Hey, I’ve seen it before many times. I’ve been to at least 10 or more WWE TV tapings over the years and I can recall some drunken buffoon trying to get in the ring at 5 of those shows. Usually they make it as far as sliding under the bottom rope before getting mauled by security. At the first ever RAW taped in the UK in October 2004 at the Manchester MEN Arena, a liquored-up fan jumped on the apron during the main event of , & vs. HHH, & Batista; he meant no harm and just played to the crowd before Michaels, Benoit & Edge grabbed him and sat on him until security took him out. Most of the time, these morons are benign. While at a TNA house show in 2011, an incredibly drunk guy whom I had never met before in my life tried to get me and some other people to the ring. “Let’s get in the ring!” He slurred and I was like, “No thanks, mate.” So the end of the show comes and who do I see but this same drunken boob jumping the rail (very slowly) and immediately getting tackled by security. Me and my girlfriend, Bev, had a good laugh at him then told his real friends who were sat next to us that their buddy had just been carted off by security. It’s not just at big arena events either; I’ve seen this phenomenon of drunken Englishmen being compelled to get into a uninvited. At a small spot show for a group called 21st Century Wrestling, a VERY casual fan, who just came along because he had nothing better to do, noted to me after a couple of beers, “I just want to get in the ring.” So, 5 beers later he insisted we should just go for it and get in there because there was no security or barricade to stop us. It took me a good 10 minutes to explain to him why getting in a wrestling ring without expressed verbal permission would be the WORST idea in . Especially at an indie spot show with no security, as I had visions of the entire locker room spilling out to kick our asses. Thankfully, he listened to reason and we didn’t cause a riot in the small village of Saltaire, Yorkshire.

Anyway, back to these dunderheads at the O2. It wasn’t like they were just acting like drunken imbeciles; this was a calculated, premeditated stunt that 5 fully grown men thought would be a perfectly good idea. They even recorded a video beforehand virtually explaining what they were going to do. It was amazing to me that they were actually in the ring long enough to do a couple of spots, while security scrambled like headless chickens to try and do something. Even referee Chad Patten tried taking one of them down, while the wrestlers looked on in bemusement. Ever the funnyman, even played along and got down to make the count for the invaders after one of their ugly blown spots. What a nice guy that Cena is; always up for a laugh. I know it’s 2015 and

6 there are all kinds of legal ramifications should a wrestler go after a fan, even if said fan has broken the unwritten rule of attending a pro wrestling show: “Once you cross that barricade you are taking your life into your own hands,” but come on. Remember punching out that goon who tipped over the ladder during his match with RVD, or kicking the head in of that guy who tried to go after the NWO at Bash at the Beach 96? Not to mention all the stories from the 70’s and 80’s of wrestlers beating the absolute crap out of marks that jumped the rail. Imagine what Bill Watts, Dick the Bruiser or The Crusher would have done to these simpletons. I’m not going to spout a bunch of “What ifs…” because usually the dumbasses that storm the ring are perfectly harmless, but the security at the O2 has a lot to answer for here. I always thought, “if you are stupid enough to get in the ring then you deserve whatever ass kicking you get”, either from the wrestlers or security, however at the end of the pranksters video it shows them being escorted from the building. No roughing up, no threats of charges being pressed, they were simply ejected from the arena. It doesn’t seem like much of a deterrent in my book. I’m not advocating corporal punishment or anything, but it was bad enough before these goofballs pulled their childish little stunt, so what happens the next time a booze hound decides to jump the rail? After all it has already been established that the worst thing that will happen is being removed from the building.

SmackDown Results: John Cena, Daniel Bryan, Tyson Kidd & Cesaro were involved in the opening segment to set up the main event tag match. squashed R-Truth in 2:10 with Sister Abigail. They showed clips of a interview from WWE.com; it was bland and uninspiring just like Reigns’ entire singles push. Bad News Barrett killed The Miz in 0:25 with the Bullhammer. Miz was then involved in a backstage skit with Mizdow & Summer Rae and they decided to have a match on RAW for the rights to the Miz gimmick. Summer slapped Miz for being a douche. Neville beat Sheamus via DQ after a decent 10 minute TV match. Sheamus threw him into the announce table for the DQ then beat him up like a total geek until Dolph Ziggler made the save. Sheamus challenged Ziggler to a, “Kiss Me Arse” match at the PPV and Dolph accepted. Ugh. New Day downed Los Matadores in 2 minutes. Big Show cut an ungodly boring 10 minute promo about chokeslamming Roman Reigns and challenged him to a Last Man Standing match at Extreme Rules. Fandango officially dumped Rosa in a backstage skit then Adam Rose swooped in for the sloppy seconds. He offered her a spot in the Rosebuds and she ran out during the

7 Fandango/Rose match to try help Rose win, but it didn’t work and Fandango got the pin with a rollup in 1:38. Cameron beat Natalya & Alicia Fox in a poor Divas threeway. Whoever the agent was for this match needs a talking to, because they thought it would be a great idea to have the women do a Tower of Doom spot, which Cameron took a nasty bump on. Bray Wyatt cut another mysterious promo on somebody. John Cena & Daniel Bryan beat Tyson Kidd & Cesaro in a short 8 minute match. The whole match was built around Cena selling and teasing the hot tag. When it finally came Bryan didn’t take any bumps at all; he even managed to land on his feet doing a Frankensteiner. Finish saw Cena AA Cesaro and Bryan tapped Kidd with the Yes lock.

The only interesting thing about the actual show was that Daniel Bryan worked a match, although like I said he really didn’t do all that much and avoided taking any bumps at all. He was sent home from the European tour after this taping on Tuesday. Word is he suffered a concussion during a match with Sheamus; I’m not exactly sure if it was the singles match they had two weeks ago or the six-man tag last week, either way it seems like Bryan had been trying to keep it quiet and work through which is not the smartest idea but hey this guy continued to wrestle Takeshi Morishima with a detached retina. It’s a real shame that Bryan’s body has taken such a beating throughout his career. I know the trolls and such are all over this with the “WWE were right to not go with Bryan as the top guy” argument, and maybe they are right, but to me all the backstage politics are irrelevant. Bryan Danielson is legitimately one of the best professional wrestlers I have ever seen in my 22 years of watching this stuff, for me he’s up there with the All Japan Big Four, the Three Musketeers, Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, Guerrero & Benoit. Of course it’s all subjective, but for a guy that only ever wanted to become a pro wrestler since he was a kid, who put his body through hell for 10 years and overcame the many barriers that the WWE put in front of him, to changing the course of WrestleMania history with fan support alone and being involved in one of the biggest feel-good moments of the modern era, it would be a tragedy for Bryan to have to retire due to the punishment he took to make it to that level. Regardless of sentiment, it all comes down to his personal health and quality of life in the end. So if this is one injury too far for Bryan Danielson then all I have to say is thank you for reminding me of why I love .

Next Week's Issue

In next week's repeated one man show we are going to look at two week's worth of RAW ratings, the new wrestling-themed Mountain Goats album 'Beat the Champ', the most recent EVOLVE show, build to Dontaku, and much more!

Contact: Subscribe Via Email: www.cubedcirclewrestling.com/subscribe-via-email General Questions/Feedback/Suggestions: [email protected] Ben Carass’s : @BenCarass Bryan Rose’ Twitter: @br26 Ryan Clingman’s Twitter : @RyanClingman

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